More DIY...

I've bashed my hands to pieces. I've got cuts, grazes and scratches all over my arms. I've nearly torn out what's left of my hair. And I've not quite finished yet. I just have one more door to construct, then both doors to hang, and voila! My cupboard is complete.

What I can say, however, is that so far, it looks good. In fact, I am quite proud of my handiwork. Amazing how merely purchasing a decent ruler and an accurate tape measure, plus taking a few more coffee breaks to think about things, can improve a finished product. I shall have to take more coffee breaks at work in future...

Knackered

After a busy day of power tool and MDF mayhem, I'm far too tired to write anything. Other than this, of course.

Power Tools...

My next DIY project is afoot! Skirting board will be ripped off! Cabling re-routed! MDF dust will be inhaled! Holes will be drilled! And this time the finished product's going to look the dogs nads. Yes, operation alcove-cupboard is underway. Wood is purchased, measurements have been taken and plans have been made. Best of all, I've finally invested in a cordless drill. My life is complete at last!

A bicycle made for three...

Ah... the Goodies... I have a Goodies DVD on at the moment... it's politically incorrect, horribly dated, cheesy...

...but still funny!

Inspirational

I have nothing to moan about today. Nothing has annoyed me, nothing is getting on my nerves, everything is cool. Which makes it sort of hard for me to blog. Except... no... I've thought of something. It's bloody cold outside. But it's winter, almost, so that's okay.

Hmmm... there must be something... it's exactly a month today until my 34th birthday? Is that good subject matter? Maybe not. We did have a very pleasant and fairly civilised evening last night, featuring lasagne, moderate amounts of alcohol and a couple of good friends... but nothing really happened... although.... No, it would be most unfair to blog about my best friend's poor bladder capacity... I could mention that "Tumblin' Monkeys" is a really good game even for adults... but it hasn't quite got the right killer edge for a quality blog entry...

Nuts to it. It's been a quiet weekend, so far, but very nice. It's makes for uninspired blogging, but a far less stressful life. Here's to tranquillity!

Winter Wonderland

Christmas is on it's way. It must be, because at work today we had our traditional annual scrap over who is working when over the holiday period and who gets to cover New Years Eve on-call, although to be fair this year it was less of a scrap and more of a consensus, which is very strange... almost an anti-climax in fact.

The other sign of the impending arrival of Christmas here in Birmingham is the opening of the German Christmas Market. Apparently it's the largest German market outside of Germany and Austria, and it's great for two reasons: firstly, the Germans make excellent sausages, and at the market cook them on a huge barbecue style grill thing; and secondly because there are lots of stalls selling all those old fashioned kind of Christmas decorations which somehow seem more Christmassy than a plastic electronic singing Santa. Oh and you can get Gluhwein as well, which is apparently very warming in nice seasonal snowy cold weather...

...of the sort which arrived this evening! It went pretty quickly, but I am going to make a prediction that it will not be the last, nor the longest lasting, snow of this winter...

Cigarettes and Alcohol... (again?)

Not sure if I've ranted, sorry, blogged about this before. If I have, apologies, but it bears repeating.

I have just read some details of the Government's proposals to ban smoking in pubs, etc in England. Personally, despite being a hardened smoker, I have a certain amount of sympathy with those who don't really want the dubious benefits of my second hand smoke, and generally I try to be a considerate smoker. Obviously, as soon as I walk in a proper pub any consideration goes out of the window. I say proper pub, because your average pub these days is trying to be a restaurant, serving the usual collection of dull faux pub grub. Most of those that aren't trying to be restaurants are trying to be night clubs.

In pursuit of their dreams of becoming more than just a pub (and the lure of profit...), these establishments all have one thing in common. Vast open plan bars, and most of the time air conditioning that has a problem removing the odour of the gassy fake beer, let alone the excess noxious products of 20 B&H.

You don't come across many pubs these days, at least not pubs you feel safe going into, with a separate bar and lounge. Fewer still I suspect which still have a smoking lounge. If you look closely at some older pubs which haven't suffered too much corporate vandalism you may still see a door with "Smoking Lounge" etched into the window, although these are probably the product of the "this is how a pub should look" horsebrass and toby-jug tat merchants who seem to be responsible for pub decor nowadays.

If breweries had retained some of the smaller rooms in their pubs, maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be facing the kind of measures now proposed. I'd be perfectly happy to go off and share my smoke with other smokers in a smoking lounge. Yes, I appreciate that some poor sod would have to go in there and collect glasses, but at least, given decent extractor fans we'd almost be only killing ourselves. Except like the kitchen at all the best parties, the smoking lounge would probably end up being the most popular place in the pub...

This will not happen however, because the damage has already been done. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who will, pretty much, stop going to pubs altogether. But those who are ready to write obituaries for the traditional English pub can hold their horses. Sorry, you're about 15 years too late.

(Flat) Packed Weekend...

It's been a busy weekend, and it's only Saturday. The best bit so far is that my back has improved, enough so that last night I could go to the pub and drink. A lot. Actually, I think it was the going to the pub and drinking a lot bit that improved my back.

So today, I've been trying to catch up after a weeks worth of not really moving very much, which has culminated in the ultimate test of any human's mental and physical fitness: constructing flat pack furniture. I'm pleased to say the said furniture was not only constructed fairly quickly (despite having to construct the drawers twice) but also without acquiring any further musculo-skeletal injuries and with only the bare minimum of Anglo-Saxon vernacular. A triumph! I am clearly fit for the world once again.

Speaking of the world, I ventured out earlier (to acquire said furniture - we enlisted the help of an acquaintance to assist with carrying - thanks Mr Baz Gingscot-Dago - but despite no end of urging, Dawn and Baz simply weren't able to carry the two six foot long 25 kilo boxes between them, so I ended up having to drive into Chavsfield to pick the stuff up) and on my travels I spotted Christmas lights. Not just Chavsfield's fairly poor official effort, but a house with Christmas lights. And how gloriously tasteless they are. Tasteless Christmas lights, and the locals haven't even stopped letting fire works off yet! Give it another week and the rest will follow and the area will clearly be visible from space as brightly flashing red, blue and green. Actually, some of the inflatable snow men and Santa's are probably visible from space on their own...

Disappointment

I'm sat here bored silly because of my stupid bad back and I was really looking forward to my normal Thursday night telly watching session. So I checked the schedules to see what wonders the BBC would be serving up on tonight's Horizon. And there isn't one. The series has finished.

Luckily, Channel 4 have stepped in to fill the breach with the hopefully interesting "Hunt for Lord Lucan" although as wasrevealed on the Fetid website some time ago, he is now running a chippy in the black country...

MAME'd

My back has gone. Again. It's really hurting. I can barely walk at times. When I am walking it's either bent double or stiff upright. Not nice at all. I would be depressed, but out of crippled boredom, I started searching through my hard drive, and I rediscovered mame. This is the single most fantastic piece of software I know of. I cannot stress how cool and wonderful it is. It allows me, despite being crippled by back pain to travel back in time to my teenage years. It is a time machine. Download it. Use it. Play R Type.

Explosives!

Had a great bonfire night yesterday. Loads of great fireworks, sparklers, traditional bonfirey food, and of course a nice big bonfire, culminating in the burning of a threat to democracy. Yes, we burnt an effigy of George W Bush...

Shrubbery

Oh well, at least American presidents can only serve 8 years in power maximum.

Keep on rockin' in the free world...

I'm not sure what all the hype is about the US Presidential elections today. Since both candidates - sorry, I'm leaving Mr Nader out of this - appear to have basically the same foreign policy (ie leave Israel to it and sod the consequences) it really doesn't make a great deal of difference to those of us on this side of the pond. That said, in my opinion Kerry does seem a little more stable and intellectually gifted than Bush - but then a lobotomised giraffe on a scooter is probably more stable and intellectually gifted than Bush...

Next year we'll have our own battle of the titans. Blair vs Howard (that's Michael Howard, leader of the Conservatives - at least for the moment - in case you've never heard of him.) No doubt the same topics (plus a bit of bigotted anti-Europeanism) will drive our election - Iraq and how we deal with terrorists. The only problem is that in both the UK and the USA, in fact most of the world, it is poverty that is the real threat to society and not mad terrorists and rogue states. But sadly bombing Arabs to make the world a "better" place seems to be less unpopular than trying to make the world a fairer place.